Being a Nation whose God is the Lord
Where Joseph: Where God's Story and Our Story Intersect • Sermon • Submitted
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Moving to the Land
Every story has an ending.
Where am I headed? What will happen so that I die? What will happen after I die? Does my life matter? Do my loved ones matter? What if my life doesn’t turn out the way I want it to?
YOLO and then the end.
Hinduism with multiple lives and karma. Buddhism with multiple lives trying to do better until you reach nirvana which is nothingness. Islam with paradise of fleshly delights.
Endings that are negative. Endings that are positive.
Big idea: The end of our story is based on God’s promise of a nation whose home is with him. By faith we must keep our eyes fixed on how we can use the push and pull of this present life to invest in that new glorious beginning.
Big idea: The end of our story is based on God’s promise of a nation whose home is with him. By faith we must keep our eyes fixed on how we can use the push and pull of this present life to invest in that new glorious beginning.
Know God’s promise of a nation
Know God’s promise of a nation
Jacob vs Israel
Promise of a nation
Idealized number
9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
11 Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands— 12 remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. 14 For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility 15 by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, 16 and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.
20 But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, 21 who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.
God gives us the promise of a nation as a legacy. People that we can invest in that will last beyond our own. Not just our own children but people and families that will carry something forward that will make our own life meaningful. By faith we believe that this nation is the nation to see thrive. Our home nation is important and God uses our nation in various ways but the church is the nation whose God is the Lord and the one that will last forever. Our numbers don’t matter as much as our faith and love for God and one another.
What legacy are you leaving? Where are you investing your time and resources?
19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
Anticipate God’s gracious provision of a place
Anticipate God’s gracious provision of a place
Joseph getting the best of the land for shepherds
1 “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. 2 In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. 4 And you know the way to where I am going.” 5 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” 6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
11 Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. From his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. 12 And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done. 13 And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done. 14 Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. 15 And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
1 Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. 3 No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. 4 They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. 5 And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever. 6 And he said to me, “These words are trustworthy and true. And the Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, has sent his angel to show his servants what must soon take place.”
We love our homes. But these are not our permanent ones.
There are endings but the biblical ending is just the start of a glorious beginning.
How should we live now then?
Expect the abundant wilderness life for now
Expect the abundant wilderness life for now
Joseph makes slaves of the Egyptians
Conservative Progress getting back to a better time
Progressive Progress starting a revolution toward a better time.
Henry David Thoreau, “Most men live lives of quiet desperation.”
We are more pessimistic and more optimistic.
Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture Sudden Upheaval: Revolutionary Eschatology
Biblical eschatology distinguishes itself from the historical ideologies of both the left and the right in two ways: it is more pessimistic and more optimistic. It is more pessimistic because the Bible provides no skyhook of ever-advancing progress by which we can haul ourselves up, nor any promise of inevitable revolution. Things do not have to get better over time, a reality to which the comforting ideologies of both left and right are gradually being forced to come to terms today, faced as they are with the combined assault of climate change, a string of financial crises, the economic, relational devastation of COVID-19, and, from a Western point of view, the weakening of the USA and the inexorable rise of China. But biblical eschatology is also more optimistic than its secular imitators on the left and right. And not just by degrees. It is “absurdly, outrageously more hopeful than liberal rationalism, with its apparently unhinged belief that not only is the salvation of the human species possible but that, contrary to all we read in the newspapers, it has in principle already taken place,” a wild optimism that “not even the most rose-tinted Trotskyist believes.” Biblical eschatology is neither straightforwardly optimistic nor unremittingly pessimistic, but “both things at the top of their energy.”33
9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. 11 Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. 12 Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.
The abundant wilderness life is fully willing to not live for the pleasures of the world but enjoy what God gives. It’s also fully willing to live for the joy of glorifying God and treating people honorably even when people are speaking evil of you because of God’s judgment at the end of time.
Will you believe God’s promise? Will you leave a legacy of love for God’s people? Who are you discipling? You say young people don’t want to be discipled but what does God want? What home are you looking forward to? What gifts of God are you enjoying? What ways are you avoiding the flesh and treating others well and even generously? How are you helping others live not for the push and pull of the present life but for the glorious new beginning that awaits our end?
Getting the land
What that means for the future
(the moves Joseph makes set up the conflict that leads to the Israelites slavery)
Knowing God’s will
Getting the best of it
Joseph’s enslavement of Egyptians
Moving to following Christ
The Abundant Life
Ruling with Christ
Community Group Questions:
What do you most appreciate about this country?
What do you most anticipate about heaven?
What are some passages that tell us about heaven?
How can we live this month in anticipation of heaven?
What challenges do you expect because we aren’t “home” yet?
How can apply 1 Peter 2:9-12 this week? Is there something to avoid? Is there someone to treat honorably?
